


Going Under

by Write_like_an_American



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: After all Floki could swim by the time he fished Athelstan's armband out of the lake... right?, Anyway here's cute learning-to-swim fic, Deal?, F/M, Let's drown in denial and pretend Season 3 never happened, M/M, May Become a Series, may not, we'll see
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 09:50:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3687720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Write_like_an_American/pseuds/Write_like_an_American
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ragnar is of the opinion that there's nothing more ridiculous than a seafaring boatbuilder who can't swim. Floki isn't convinced. Swimming lessons ensue, to varying levels of success.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Under

The first time Ragnar tried to teach Floki to swim was very almost the last. Because usually when you shove someone off a jetty, you assume that they’ll make _some_ coordinated effort to float. 

“You were telling the truth,” Ragnar says as he hauls his sodden friend back towards the beach. “You really _do_ sink.” Floki clings to Ragnar like he’s afraid he’ll dissolve if he breaks contact, and giggles hysterically into his neck. 

As soon as they’re back on land he detaches. Ragnar half expects a pop, that wet suction noise you get when you pry a limpet off a rock. Floki scuttles away, eyes darting between Ragnar and the waves as if he expects to be tossed back in again the moment he gets in arms reach. His kohl has run; it streaks Floki’s face with charcoal-black, the colour of trodden ash around a firepit. Rolling his eyes, Ragnar starts towards him, meaning to smear it away with a sodden sleeve. 

He manages a single step before Floki bolts. 

_By Frigg’s milky tits._

He should have seen that one coming. A line of sodden footprints stretch out over the cold sand between them, measuring the distance. “Floki!” Ragnar calls, taking another futile step. Water sloshes out of his boots, staining the sand. “Wait, Floki! We still have to talk about…” 

He trails off. Floki shows no signs of stopping. 

The man looks madder than usual. His patchy hair is plastered to his head, his clothes cling to his bony limbs, and he’s spattering drops with every step like a half-drowned mobile scarecrow. Ragnar stifles a groan where he sees where he’s headed. _The village._ Kattegat. Probably making a beeline back to his trees. It’s the fastest route, but it’s also the one most likely to wind up with Floki colliding with one of Haraldson’s men and punching someone important. And that’s most likely to wind up with Floki being dragged in front of Haraldson and being made to pay reparation – which isn’t in itself a problem; a good carpenter is never short of money. But it does mean a lot of fuss. A lot of attention and jeering and _what’s that crazy fool done this time?_ And then the next time Ragnar treks through the mountains in quest of a progress report on their boat, he’ll have a hut with a fire that hasn’t been lit in weeks, and Floki will be nowhere to be found. 

And all because the damn idiot refuses to learn how to swim. 

Ragnar sighs, pushing his wet plait back over his shoulders. They’re already behind schedule. If he wants their boat to be ready for the next raiding season, an apology is due. However little he feels Floki deserves it. After all, the man’s a damn _boatbuilder._ Trained to fight. Trained to raid. What use is a seafarer that sinks like a stone? 

Squeezing a deluge of cold water from his sleeves, he gives himself a quick shakedown, wrings out his plait, and sets off in pursuit. 

“Floki! 

That’s the first time. The second occurs six months before he takes Bjorn to introduce him to his forest-dwelling friend. Ragnar is headed to Kattegat on the pretence of business with a man who owes him a goat, intending to speak to that same man and convince him to join their raid. He’s passing the forest anyway – the forest he’s inexplicably come to think of as Floki’s Forest, although King Horik is the only one to lay claim to this wild unsettled land. He might as well go and see how things are progressing. 

Ragnar trudges along the path, winding between the great pines and the slender birches, the mighty ashes whose roots bulge up through the earth like veins on a giant’s hand. He expects at any minute to be accosted by a madman in a mask. It doesn’t happen. The woods are silent – but for the rustle of the leaves and the scuttle of the creatures in the undergrowth and the _crok_ of the watching ravens. 

There are always ravens. 

Ragnar turns his neck, scrutinizes the canopy’s underbelly. But they’re either too fast for him or too hidden away; he doesn’t spot so much as a clawtip. Floki, apparently, has taken a leaf from their book – or a feather from their wing. By the time Ragnar reaches the hut and pushes open the door to find a dead fire and a half-butchered rabbit its only occupants, it is apparent that his carpenter does not want to be found. 

The embers are still warm though. That is something. 

Ragnar rises from his squat and kicks moodily at the ashes. He didn’t want to resort to calling for Floki – that would mean he had won. But what choice does he have? 

_You’re being immature,_ he tells himself, slapping his hands to keep warm. Floki’s hut is well-built – of course – and windtight. But without the fire, the air is sinking back into the chill of early spring. _Like Bjorn when he can’t find Gyda when they’re playing hide and seek._ The thought of his two children tumbling shrieking from the hayloft – a favourite hideaway of theirs – brings a smile to his face. With a lighter heart, Ragnar turns from the rabbit’s glassy dead eyes and steps over it to stand in the hut’s doorway. It is, like everything Floki builds, quite beautiful. Carvings twine up on either side of him, meeting above his head. When he’d first entered, Ragnar had thought that the elegant swooping lines were branches or vines. But now he looks closer, he sees that they are fire. 

If Floki can carve a doorway to rival the entrance to a temple, then Ragnar’s boat – _their_ boat – is going to be magnificent. Ragnar rests his hand over the wood for a moment, caught between giddy anticipation and the knowledge that there is still much work to do. The material feels oddly warm, as if it has been heated by the curling flames cut into its surface. Ragnar smiles. He traces the jagged tip of a flame with his thumb. _Magnificent._ It’s going to be the best damn boat this world has seen. 

Now if only he could find his builder, and see their project underway. 

Ragnar turns to the forest. It opens before him, dark and gloomy, sunlight shafting through in patches. The wind breaks on these trees, like waves on rock. Sound breaks on them too, ripped into shreds of echo and whisper against the forest’s low thrum. Something scrapes along the roof boards – a bird of some sort, or a low-hanging branch – and the noise is almost drowned beneath the pull of his own breath. Not to be deterred, Ragnar cups his hands around his mouth and hollers as loud as he can – 

“Floki!” 

There’s another scuffle from the roof, and a patch of moss sails down past his cheek. Ragnar, suspicion dawning, twists lithely on his heel, one hand springing to his sword. But he’s not fast enough. His assailant crashes atop of him, all gangly knees and elbows, and gives him a exaggerated smack on the lips before sitting back triumphant on his belly. 

“I caught you,” says Floki, wriggling happily. Ragnar groans, hacking for breath. Floki’s knee is digging into his sternum. But he can’t stop his smile. 

“I thought I was supposed to catch you,” he complains around his gasps. Floki obligingly slides back off his diaphragm, settling himself instead over Ragnar’s hips. When Ragnar tries to push himself up at the elbows, however, muddy boots are placed on his shoulders and shove him back down in the dirt. Ragnar, never one to ignore a challenge, waits until he’s got his breath back. Then he hooks an elbow under Floki’s calf and surges to one side, rolling the two of them over the wet leaves. “There,” he pants, when his friend has been successfully immobilised. “Caught you.” Floki struggles for a while without affect, glowering at his pinned legs as if they’ve done him personal affront. Then he laughs. And before Ragnar can twist his face away, he grabs him by the ears and kisses him again. 

Ragnar snorts and detaches him. This time he gets his limpet-sound, and an affronted, wide-eyed blink. 

“I have a wife, remember?” he asks, giving Floki a shake. 

Floki looks more affronted still. 

“Your wife loves me, remember?” 

Laughing, Ragnar cuffs him round the ear. He leaves his hand there to card through the thin soft hairs that dot Floki’s scalp at random, and leans in to blow teasing air across Floki’s lips. 

“Not that much.” The match is conceded with a sigh and a flop on Floki’s behalf. But Ragnar keeps him beneath him a few breaths longer than necessarily, enough to have Floki twitching, before he finally swings himself off to collapse besides. They lay there in silence. Floki plays with his scraggly beard and fidgets like a child, and Ragnar tucks his hands behind his head, fingers woven in a loose lattice, and thinks of the West. It’s oddly peaceful. The noises of the forest no longer seem oppressive. The canopy is a choppy sea of twigs and leaves and unseen ravens, and this close, Floki smells of moss and earth after rain. That’ll change, of course. They’ll be on a boat for days. Crammed into close quarters with twelve other men. Sharing a sleeping sack to ward off the frostbite, and slaving at the oars beneath the lash of wind and spray. By the end, everything will smell the same – a homogenous brew of dried salt and sweat. But by then, their enemies will be the only ones who will notice. 

Ragnar wonders briefly what he smells of right now. Then decides it’s probably somewhere in the region of ‘goat’, and that Floki knows how to flatter someone with lies as much as he knows to keep a secret. It’s better not to ask. 

But his thoughts of the west have reminded of him of something – an issue that is still to be resolved. 

“Floki,” he begins, rolling his head to one side. Floki stays facing up, eyes tracing the leaves above. The only sign that he’s heard is the twitch of his beard. Ragnar heaves his left side up so that he’s fully facing him – cunningly inching himself nearer in the process. Then he leans on his elbow, faux-casual, and asks – “Can you swim yet?” 

The words hit like a slap to the face. Floki all but ricochets away - but Ragnar is ready this time. He throws himself forwards, wrapping his arms around Floki’s torso and earning an elbow to the nose for his efforts. 

“Get off me, get off me! Don’t toss me in the lake!” 

“Ow! You damn goat-fucker, I’m not going to toss you in the lake!” Floki’s flailing slows. Then stills altogether. Ragnar, knowing better than to release him just yet, keeps him pressed down with his bodyweight and bleeds patiently onto his chest. 

“You’re not?” asks Floki in a small voice. He doesn’t seem to notice the warm deluge of blood spilling from Ragnar’s nostrils, although a fair amount of it has splattered on his face. It looks unnaturally bright against the monochrome palate of hair, skin and kohl. Finally daring to release his grip, Ragnar allows a centimetre of air between them and pats his messy cheek in comfort. 

“Well, it didn’t work last time. Why would it work again?” It’s reasonable, it’s logical, and Floki goes limp at the touch like he always does, leaning into the warm, calloused palm. 

“But you’re still going to make me swim,” he states. He sounds so glum that Ragnar can’t help but cup the other side of his face too, sliding rough thumbs through the bloody kohl-streaked stubble. 

“We’ll go gentle this time,” he promises. Sniffs and rubs at the blood painting his chin. “Like when I taught my boy to swim – Bjorn, you remember Bjorn?” The distraction works, and Floki’s tight expression gives way to a grin. 

“Little bear-cub!” 

Ragnar smiles. “That’s the one.” 

“I haven’t seen him since he was sucking on Lagertha’s tits.” Floki’s face falls. “He must be big now. Do you think he’ll remember me?” 

“I’ll bring him to Kattegat next year before we sail. It’s time he got his armring anyway – you can meet him then.” 

“Hm.” Floki peers up at him, eyes glittering and gleeful within their dark rings. “Will he be coming with you? To raid?” 

Taken aback, Ragnar barks out a laugh. “No. No! Can you imagine what Lagertha would do to me if I even suggested it?” 

The thought makes Floki giggle. “She’d rip your balls off.” 

“With her teeth,” Ragnar agrees. “No, Bjorn has a lot to learn before he comes raiding with us.” 

The last word makes Floki stiffen. Ragnar hadn’t noticed he was moving; one gets accustomed to the constant fidgeting after prolonged exposure. But he definitely notices when it ceases. 

“Us,” repeats Floki, voice a high purr in the back of his throat. His eyes look even larger than normal. “You said _us_.” Ragnar blinks. 

“What else would I have said?” 

“You should have said ‘with me’.” 

Oh no. He’s not getting out of this that easily. Ragnar fastens his hands around Floki’s skinny biceps and hauls them both up. Floki flops uncooperatively the whole way. Once he’s finally wrestled the taller man’s feet under him, Ragnar slaps him on the shoulder and squeezes – a warning, just in case Floki is tempted to start their game of chase again. 

“You’re coming with us, you idiot. And you’re learning to swim. Come on.” Another squeeze. Then – and this is the dangerous part – Ragnar releases him completely, steps away, and turns his back. He strides off into the deeper forest, where the trunks grow crusty with bearded lichens and everything is perpetually damp and humid. He doesn’t look over his shoulder once. But he’s listening. Listening all the time, for the patter of feet that means Floki is obeying the silent command. 

Hesitation, and then – “The stream’s that way,” says Floki. But he trots at Ragnar’s heels nevertheless. Ragnar, pinching his aching nasal bridge with one hand and scratching at the crust of blood that’s drying into his moustache with the other, doesn’t bother to hide his smile. 

“I know,” he says. “But we’re going this way. Come on.” If Floki thinks he can learn to swim in a trickle of meltwater that barely covers his ankles, he must have been at the mushrooms again. No, they need something bigger. Something big enough to float in – and Ragnar knows just what. Floki, of course, knows the forest like the back of his hand; probably has a name for every tree and sapling and a designated future for them too. This one will be a mast. This a high seat pillar. This a door jamb, and this a rafter. That gnarled and knobbled oak will make a series of detailed Odin figurines for wealthy families to place over their beds, a new mask to scare off interlopers into this woodland realm, and possibly a toy for Bjorn. Ragnar doesn’t have the gift of tree-seeing. But he has an imagination as broad as it is vivid. As they walk, the boughs above him transform into the wooden arches of a house, a great hall, a temple for the Gods. 

Unfortunately, because Floki knows the forest so well, it also doesn’t take him long to figure out where they’re going. 

The footsteps stop. Ragnar doesn’t. “Come on,” he repeats, dragging his fingers along rough bark. 

“No,” Floki says. Ragnar pauses at the edge of a bracken patch, and glances over his shoulders. His eyes glimmer like ice-shards in the gloom. _No?_

“Floki. Come.” 

But Floki ducks his chin to his chest and glowers at the forest floor. His balding crown is dappled with the watery light that streams through the leaves, like the hind of a doe, and he crosses his arms over his chest in a gesture that would look stubborn if it wasn’t so defensive. His sleeves are too short, Ragnar notices. His wrists protrude out, white and thin and fragile, and his long fingers curl into the leather. 

“You said you wouldn’t throw me in the lake, Ragnar. You said.” 

Evidently, this is going to take more persuasion. Ragnar retraces his steps, stomping through the crackling ferns with more force than is necessary. He likes to think that years of dealing with Bjorn’s tantrums and Gyda’s sullen silences have made him a patient man. But there’s something fundamentally _ridiculous_ about Floki’s aversion to all things swimming-related, and it gnaws on him like a starved dog. 

“And I won’t,” he promises, catching one of those wrists when it comes up to push him away. “If you come willingly.” 

Floki huffs, snarls, throws his free hand up in the air, and leads the way. 

They reach the tarn before midday. Its surface is a still mirror, as bleak and unmoving as the glacier that bored it. The sun is half-fogged with cloud and the lingering night mists, squinting down at them like a bilious yellow eye. 

Up until this moment, Floki lopes along without complaint. He bounces more and more with every step; pointing out his favourite trees, darting from one to the other to lay his head against their trunks or swarm up into the lower branches, rolling over them backwards and dangling by his knees. Ragnar, ever-amused by his friend’s antics, indulged him and struggled up a few himself. He’d always been a good climber. Better than Rollo, at any rate. But the trees here are nothing like those frail things that bow to the winds around his farm. They are ancient and old and slippery with moss; more often than not Ragnar finds himself dazed on his back, dirt clumped under his fingernails, while Floki cackles and kicks his heels above. 

Eventually though, they leave the treeline. Scrubby brush runs down a shallow incline, all the way to the shore. The ground is soupy beneath their feet, mud clinging to the soles of their boots. Ragnar spots a drier-looking patch halfway round the shore, and turns to point Floki towards it – only to find that his friend is, once again, nowhere in sight. 

_Frigg’s tits._

Ten minutes later sees Ragnar dragging a less-than-amused boatbuilder towards the water with the full intention of seeing how far he can punt him. 

“No!” shrieks Floki, clawing at Ragnar’s arm. “You said you wouldn’t! Ragnar, you promised! _You swore on the Gods_!” 

“Liar,” growls Ragnar, hooking his other arm around Floki’s neck and forcing the man into a reluctant frogmarch. By the time they reach the shoreline, Ragnar’s got more scratches than after a night with Lagertha and Floki is pressed back against his chest, eyes glancing anywhere but the glossy black water. Ragnar turns his chokehold into a tender grip, turning Floki’s chin so that he has no choice but to stare the lake in its bottomless maw. “Now we can do this the easy way,” he says, whispering the words against a kohl-stained ear. “Or we can do this my way. Your choice, Floki.” 

And, given a choice like that… 

Floki’s fingernails withdraw from Ragnar’s forearm – Ragnar suppresses a wince. Then they get to work on his belt. 

“I hate you,” says Floki, voice muffled from where he’s bent over the knotted laces. Ragnar steps back to give him space to pull his tunic over his head, eyes narrowing at how easily he can count the vertebrate, before beginning on his own clothes. 

“No you don’t,” he replies. Unclasps his cloak and lets it slump to the earth. Floki sighs. 

“No. I don’t.” 

They undress in silence. Finally they’re both standing, nude and shrivelled with the cold, their clothes heaped atop a dry hunk of grass. Floki watches the lake and Ragnar watches Floki. 

“Go on then,” he says. Floki shivers. 

“You first.” 

Ragnar shrugs. “Alright. But you’re coming with me.” And he pinches Floki’s wrist and tugs him forwards. 

Floki looks like he’s eaten a bad mushroom; his skin is clammy and Ragnar can see the sweat on his neck that belies the chill of the air. They’re sheltered here, surrounded by trees on all sides. The tarn lays at the bottom of a wooden cauldron. Barely a breath of wind stirs her surface. But that does not help matters – it only enhances the lake’s eerie calmness, the glassy plate of its waters, so different from the choppy seas and bubbling springs they’re used to. This water isn’t alive. It’s not even dead – for deadness at least contains _animation,_ as the maggots start to feast and the flesh sags and putrefies. 

Ragnar doesn’t know how to describe it: this feeling he gets, standing with his toes tickling the shallows. And so he doesn’t try. 

Instead, he steps forwards, suppressing his wince at the coldness of the water. And Floki, grubby and shaking, half the woodland dirt stuck to his bare skin, follows. 

The tarn is clear and deep. The shallows move downwards at a gentle gradient for almost twenty feet before dropping off into fathomless black. Its surface is a skein stretched over nothingness, a translucent shroud pulled taught over Ginnungagap itself. If one of them goes in there alone, they may never surface again. 

It feels like Ragnar’s toes are being enveloped in a hoar-hewn shoe. They’re numb already, but he knows from a childhood of splashing after Rollo and Thorstein and the other older boys at Kattegat that they’ll warm soon enough, so long as he keeps them moving. His arm is twisted behind him. Floki, of course. Still prancing skittishly, barely ankle-deep. Ragnar, feeling vindictive, splashes him, and is rewarded with a shriek and a wounded glare. 

The splashing does have an effect though. Never one to back down from a challenge, Floki kicks a gout of icy water to soak Ragnar’s groin. Ragnar makes a noise not unlike a dog stomped by a carthorse. It feels like being stabbed between the legs with an icicle. Foreseeing himself and Floki losing their favourite bodyparts to frostbite, Ragnar almost calls this whole venture off there and then. But no. He’s on a mission. Floki is going to come with them when the raid west, and Floki is going to master the doggy paddle so that Ragnar doesn’t have to tie him to the mast to stop him tumbling overboard. 

Resolve set, Ragnar grits his teeth and wades further out, coaxing the giggling Floki with him, until they’re both submerged to their thighs. Floki’s still too busy laughing to suspect retaliation. Ragnar takes full advantage, tightening his grip on the bony wrist before roughly yanking him down. There’s a moment of almost perfect stillness where Floki’s eyes are the only thing that seem to be moving, growing bigger within their messy kohl rims. Then gravity takes hold and he falls flailing back, sending up a great geyser. Half of it crashes into Ragnar. 

“ _Odin’s beard,_ that’s freezing!” 

Floki, snorting water, coughs and sputters something that sounds suspiciously like “ _You think_?” Grinning, Ragnar shakes himself off. The drops send fractured rainbows glancing off the water, as the ripples settle and the silt they’ve kicked up slowly filters back to the bottom. He offers Floki his hand. Floki takes it, and pulls himself up – bringing a cupped palm full of water with him to dump over Ragnar’s head, which Ragnar only narrowly avoids. Dodging his friend’s frustrated shove, Ragnar laughs and dances deeper. 

“You can avenge your pride later, Floki. We’ll both be soaked through soon enough.” That halts Floki’s offense. But it also reminds him of why Ragnar dragged him away from his trees in the first place, and he stumbles to a halt, water streaming from his scraggly beard. 

“Do we really have to?” he mumbles, but it’s without much hope. Ragnar wades in a wide circle, enjoying the drag and pull of water against his legs. 

“Yes we have to,” he says. He lets his knees fold until he’s up to the neck, sculling gently with his fingertips, and beckons Floki forwards. No more than six feet behind him the bed of the tarn drops away into open water. But here it is shallow and safe, and not even Floki can justify retreat. And so he shuffles forwards – sullenly, silt billowing up from between his toes. Ragnar sinks until he’s just a pair of blue eyes, plait floating snakelike behind him. He burbles out the last of his breath and sinks further, sitting on the bottom with sand grains rubbing his bare backside. He can see Floki’s shins under the water, skinny and pale as the rest of him. His toes are digging into the lakebed hard enough to burrow holes. He doesn’t seem inclined to join him. So Ragnar stands. The surface breaks over his head like the breaching of a womb, bulging up in synchrony. Fat ripples worm their way outwards until they are swallowed by the water once again. 

“See?” Ragnar pants, scraping wet hairs from his eyes. “Nothing to be afraid of.” 

“I’m not afraid,” says Floki, which must be the worst lie he’s ever told. Ragnar grins. 

“Prove it,” he orders. “Come here.” Floki does so, slogging determinedly closer until the water laps over his hips. He doesn’t lift his feet from the lakebed, choosing instead to slide them along. Mud trails through the clear water like froth in the wake of a ship. Thankfully this isn’t flint country; there’s no sharp stones, only thick sediment and the occasional water-swollen twig to impediment Floki’s passage. He makes it to Ragnar without incident. The younger man grabs him by the elbows and pulls him round so that they’re standing chest-to-chest, water gleaming off of their goosepimpled skin. Or rather, chest-to-shoulders. _Lanky fool._

Floki peers down his nose at Ragnar, feigning confidence. 

“Now what?” he asks. 

“Now,” says Ragnar, “we swim.” 

They don’t. 

They don’t, because at that precise moment, a woman with a wild dandelion-fluff of blonde hair and eyes rimmed with half as much kohl as Floki’s – which is still entirely too much, in Ragnar’s opinion – skips out of the forest, spots the two very naked, very drenched men standing locked together in what could almost be an embrace, and starts capering and waving like a mad thing. 

“Floki! Floki!” 

“Helga!” Floki shouts back, sounding almost as delighted as when he finds a new tree. He tries to pull free but Ragnar won’t let him – at which point Floki’s ankle tangles with his, they try to move in opposite directions, and both wind up both falling face-first into the lake. Helga draws to a stop by the water’s edge, dropping her wicker basket. Her laughter is a jangling tinkle. 

“I like your friend, Floki!” she calls, as the two men emerge, clawing at the water and each other. “He’s very handsome. Can he join us tonight?” The water has been clouded by silt again, but that’s quickly fading. Ragnar wonders whether he should cover himself, but seeing as Floki hasn’t bothered, decides against it. Floki, meanwhile, has disentangled himself and is already halfway back to shore. It seems he’s forgotten their swimming lesson – no doubt on purpose. Smiling in spite of himself, Ragnar shakes his head and starts after him. By the time he reaches dry ground, Floki is lounging out on the sand, naked as the day he was born, his sopping head pressed against the woman’s calf. 

“You don’t want him in our bed, Helga,” he’s saying as Ragnar approaches. A quick flick of the eyes towards him; a grin. “He smells of goats.” 

“But he’s just had a bath!” 

Ragnar steps past them, moving to his and Floki’s discarded clothing. Even without wind, being wet and bare in early spring is never a pleasant experience. But for someone who likes the temperature in his hut to be somewhere between a firepit and a blacksmith’s forge, Floki doesn’t seem to notice. Ragnar tosses him his tunic and pants. 

“Get up. If you’re not going to swim, you can at least show me the boat before I have to leave for Kattegat.” 

The mention of the boat has Floki sitting upright. He scrambles to his feet, shooting his woman an apologetic glance. She shrugs, helping him brush the soil from his shoulders. 

“I shall cook some stew for you then, for when you return.” She gives her basket a meaningful shake. It’s full of mushrooms. Ragnar does a quick check, because you can never be too careful with someone like Floki – but he doesn’t spot any of the grey-capped hallucinogenics or the white soporifics among the heaped fungi. Still, he resolves to stick to the rabbit. 

“Thank you, Helga,” Floki singsongs, darting in to kiss her. She laughs again, high and free, and flicks the water droplet that’s beading on the end of his nose. Ragnar watches them, amused. Seeing them like this, so obviously at ease in one another’s company, he’s tempted to take them up on their offer. He enjoys seeing his friend so happy. And this Helga, whoever she is… She is very pretty, as small and delicate as a black-eyed bird. 

It’s not like he’s never shared a woman. He’d even had a couple with Rollo, before he’d met Lagertha. And, while he has a feeling that it would be different with Floki and Helga – not so much awkward eye-contact, for one, but also because he’s heard what people say about Floki when they aren’t clamouring for him to fix their boats after a storm, and he knows it’s not all gossip – Ragnar’s always been of the opinion that shame is only shame for those who care to entertain it. 

But there’d be no keeping it from Lagertha. And it wouldn’t be fair, to indulge in pleasure without her. 

So when Helga dances off into the trees, dress flitting about her bare ankles, and Floki sidles up to him, pokes him in the shoulder, and repeats Helga’s offer, Ragnar politely refuses. 

“Maybe when my wife and I next come to Kattegat,” he says. Floki shrugs and goes back to his lecture on how to shape a stern.

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who is still in denial after 3:06. Not so much for Athelmeh, but for what it’ll mean for Ragnar and Floki… So of course, I had to write a fic about my favourite pre-season 1 Vikings, before that goddam monk arrived. About the threesome/foursome teaser… Want to see more of that? If not, I’ll stick with the usual OT3s (Torstein/Floki/Helga and Lagertha/Athelstan/Ragnar. I _guess_ I could handle writing Athelmeh if he was stuck in a Viking sandwich.)
> 
> Please read and review!


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